Cisco Live 2013: Brush Up with These 5 Must-Read White Papers

Ricky is a social journalist for BizTech magazine. He's a writer, technology enthusiast, social media lover and all-around digital guy.

“Less is more” was adopted as a rallying cry for minimalism by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, but it’s also a perfect fit for modern IT.

Virtualization technology now allows IT to do more computing with less hardware. For example, a BizTech feature from last fall told the story of the Gynecologic Oncology Group’s journey to virtualization efficiency. The organization was able to reduce its hardware infrastructure significantly and went from running about 30 to 40 physical machines to a five-host cluster running about 40 virtual machines.

This shift to combine, consolidate and optimize in IT is most visible in the trend toward converged infrastructure.

Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System (UCS) is leading the charge on that front, helping growing businesses stock up on computing capacity without building entirely new data centers.

Total Wine & More, an independent retailer of beverages and accessories, decided to make the switch to converged infrastructure and specifically Cisco’s UCS more than two years ago when the company ran out of room in its data center.

“Our rack-based server infrastructure had maxed out our data center real estate. We simply couldn’t expand on the platform we were using,” said Todd Slan, director of technology at Total Wine & More, in a recent CDW case study.

In addition to the strides being made in data center infrastructure, networking and collaboration remain hot topics for Cisco Live attendees. Cisco recently rolled out its innovative Stadium Wi-Fi solution at the Georgia Dome, helping fans stay connected during the 2013 NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Final Four. Collaboration technology is keeping up with the mobile and social trends in technology as Cisco’s WebEx Meetings for iOS received a major upgrade recently.

If you’re headed to Cisco Live 2013, download these white papers ahead of the show as prep material.